The summer I was 19, and married less than a year, Phil and I discovered a used bookstore at the beach selling Agatha Christie's for a song. We sat in low chairs in the ocean and read them one after another. I will always associate Dame Agatha with summer.
19 comments:
I used to read long books in the summers. SHOGUN is one I remember especially.
I remember reading long books once upon a time. And for a college teacher that makes sense.
I remember reading some of James Michener's work during the summer.
When I was in college, summer was a time for reading "guilty pleasures" (i.e., mysteries and romance novels) which were definitely not part of the curriculum! After I got out of college and knew I'd never have to read " The Faerie Queen" or "Paradise Lost" again, I started reading what I wanted to read, regardless of the season.
The only one I associate with summer is Fredric Brown's science fiction novel THE MIND THING. I was a teenager and read on a patio chaise lounge overlooking a clear New Hampshire lake. Halfway through the book, I had a sudden migraine headache (too much sun, I expect). Rather than going inside to rest, I plowed through the book to its end while trying to ignore the constant stabbing pain. That's when I realized how important books were to me. THE MIND THING, by the way, was a great book; I'd swim through an ocean of migraines to read a book like that again.
When I was a teenager I was excited to find I could take out library books for the entire summer. The one I remember most was THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO.
In 1974 we spent 7 weeks in Europe, mostly traveling by train on a Eurailpass. I read several of Helen MacInnes's books including ASSIGNMENT IN BRITTANY.
When it gets really hot I like to read books set in the Arctic or Antarctic like THE SURVIVORS (THE WHITE SOUTH) by Hammond Innes.
I've also read some longer books like HAWAII.
Jeff M.
Like Bill Crider, I read long books during Summertime (I still do). One summer I read Anthony Trollope'sThe Chronicles of Barsetshire:
The Warden (1855)
Barchester Towers (1857)
Doctor Thorne (1858)
Framley Parsonage (1861)
The Small House at Allington (1864)
The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)
Both Phil and I want to read that Fredric Brown book, Jerry. Great story.
Wow, nice library system, Jeff.
George, you and my friend Anca read Trollope in the summer. She can never get enough of him either.
Thrillers seem best during the hot days. Not sure why. Preston & Child and Jmes rollins are favorites during the summer.
Patti, sadly those days are gone at the Brooklyn Public Library. Now you get three weeks and you can renew books as often as you want as long as no one else has a hold on the book. But there was something special about waiting for the day in June when the summer loans began.
Jeff M. (from the geezer bus)
We get two weeks if the book is new and you can renew it until someone else wants it. I often don't get to a book before I have to return it because I take so many out. Greedy.
There used to be a limit of 10 books out at one time but that no long applies either. There is a limit of 10 books on the "hold" list however. Since we each have na account I can put 20 books on hold at a time.
I generally try and read the new books first in case they can't be renewed.
Jeff M.
My library will do a "vacation loan". We'll give an extra week or two if someone is out of town.
Wow. I also remember reading EAST OF EDEN one summer. And then every other book Steinbeck wrote. Must have been 17.
Patti, the usual suspects like the Hardy Boys, James Hadley Chase, and Erle Stanley Gardner, and popular fiction of the 70s and 80s like Forsyth, Deighton, MacLean, Follett, Dick Francis, Archer, Ludlum, Harold Robbins, Irving Wallace, Desmond Bagley, and lots of comics, all of which I read during summer vacations.
I read what I want when I want and the season has nothing to do with it. And stay off my lawn!
Travels with Charlie, Fathers and Sons, Shardik, Watership Down, My Antonia, Centennial, The Alexandria Quartet (Justine, Balthazar, Montolive, Clea). During more than one summer I've read both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and also The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
I'm positive I read Michener's The Fires of Spring one summer when I was much younger. I used to carry big books with me to our cottage, but gave that up a few years because they never got read. Now it's thin ones for summer reading although I keep promising myself that I will get to Richard Ford's Canada and Don Winslow's very big The Power of the Dogs this summer.
THE CIDER HOUSE RULES, though set in New England during the autumn & winter, always makes me think of summer. I associate it with the pivotal summer of my life as I prepared to move out on my own to Chicago at the end of August 1986.
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